Alright folks, today I present my latest "build", consisting of mostly spare parts with a few things off eBay.
Parts List and Pricing
CPU: 3/0GHz 4C/4T Intel Core i5-7400. Nothing exciting here, got it off eBay for $80.
RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) Corsair DDR4-2400. Had it floating around. Free.
Motherboard: Gigabyte B250M-Gaming 3. Because I had it floating around and the model number contains gaming so it must be better, right? Free.
Storage: 240GB WD Easystore SSD. As far as I know, it's just the Best Buy rebadge of the WD Green 240GB SSD. But, who cares, at least it's not a mechanical hard drive and it was either that or waste a 500GB WD Blue SSD on this PC and that wasn't gonna happen. Free.
Video Card: nVidia Tesla C2050 3GB. Well now this is an interesting one. It's basically a slightly worse GTX480 but with more VRAM... and it arrived DOA. The eBay seller is shipping me another. In the meantime I got the defective one to work by ghetto-reflowing it with my generic Amazon SMD rework station heatgun thing. So, assuming the replacement one works out of the box and this one stays working and they don't want it back, I'll have got two GPUs for $40. So we'll say this one cost me $20.
PSU: 300W Delta DPS-300AB-36B (Dell OEM PSU) This one is courtesy of Topcat. I bought a Dell Vostro from him and this was thrown in. He did a very nice job recapping it before shipping it out and I replaced the stock 80mm fan with a Noctua I had floating around because why not? For price, well, $10 is how much a Noctua NF-R8 is worth, a few bucks for the capacitors although I didn't personally pay for them, and $7 for two SATA to PCI-E power adapters gets us to $20.
Case: Rosewill SRM-01B MicroATX. This came with an 80mm in the front, which I replaced with a random used 120mm fan. While the Newegg listing boasts "Build an office PC within the compact and sturdy steel mini tower computer case. Enjoy lasting performance, a spacious interior and versatility for all your current hardware and future upgrades." I think what they meant to say is... why is there still a 90s-style 80mm fan cutout above the CPU cooler area on the side panel and why is there still an optical drive bay? Anyway, since I had it just sitting here, although it cost $30 originally, we'll say this one was free.
CPU Cooler: China RGB CPU Cooler. This is by far the "best" part. Advertised as having "superb cooling performance: Aluminum Fin permutations and combinations of science, with enhanced air duct system, cooling performance is more superior" this cooler also has "Quiet design: the outer and inner quiet move to achieve the perfect combination of performance and silent." Sadly it didn't include thermal paste, so I used a dab of Noctua NT-H1. Price: $14.
OS: Windows 10 Pro x64. Didn't bother with activation, the not activated message in the bottom right isn't a deal breaker. Price: Free.
So, in total, this PC cost $134. Given I could probably sell it for at least that much, I have no complaints yet.
The Build
Overall, assembly was easy, with no fitment issues. In fact, reflowing the GPU took longer than the entire rest of the build process. As you can see by the photos at the bottom of this post, I took cable management very seriously... not.
The CPU cooler came with no instructions, but it was easy enough to figure out. It's not particularly secure but given that it weighs about the same as a pill bottle I'm not concerned about it falling off. The RGB LEDs are a joke, since the included fan is 3-pin only (a PWM fan would have cost too much, duh) and so unless you're running it at full blast/12V only a few of the LEDs come on somewhat dim and flickery. This bothered me so I put a different random non-RGB 92mm fan on there. Temps maxed out at 57C after several hours of Folding@Home, so, hey, it works.
I wasted a lot of time troubleshooting the video card before simply attempting to reflow it and getting it working. The latest drivers off the nVidia website listed for the card refused to install, however Windows Update came through and installed some drivers from 2015. Good enough!
Testing, Benchmarks and Gaming, Part 1/2
Unigine Valley: at 1280x720 with quality: low and all other settings at default, we benchmarked at a respectable 89.8FPS average with a benchmark score of 3759 points.
FurMark: Technically 0FPS since the 300W PSU nopes out on us and reboots almost instantly. I guess I'll swap in a larger PSU and continue testing. To be continued...
Parts List and Pricing
CPU: 3/0GHz 4C/4T Intel Core i5-7400. Nothing exciting here, got it off eBay for $80.
RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) Corsair DDR4-2400. Had it floating around. Free.
Motherboard: Gigabyte B250M-Gaming 3. Because I had it floating around and the model number contains gaming so it must be better, right? Free.
Storage: 240GB WD Easystore SSD. As far as I know, it's just the Best Buy rebadge of the WD Green 240GB SSD. But, who cares, at least it's not a mechanical hard drive and it was either that or waste a 500GB WD Blue SSD on this PC and that wasn't gonna happen. Free.
Video Card: nVidia Tesla C2050 3GB. Well now this is an interesting one. It's basically a slightly worse GTX480 but with more VRAM... and it arrived DOA. The eBay seller is shipping me another. In the meantime I got the defective one to work by ghetto-reflowing it with my generic Amazon SMD rework station heatgun thing. So, assuming the replacement one works out of the box and this one stays working and they don't want it back, I'll have got two GPUs for $40. So we'll say this one cost me $20.
PSU: 300W Delta DPS-300AB-36B (Dell OEM PSU) This one is courtesy of Topcat. I bought a Dell Vostro from him and this was thrown in. He did a very nice job recapping it before shipping it out and I replaced the stock 80mm fan with a Noctua I had floating around because why not? For price, well, $10 is how much a Noctua NF-R8 is worth, a few bucks for the capacitors although I didn't personally pay for them, and $7 for two SATA to PCI-E power adapters gets us to $20.
Case: Rosewill SRM-01B MicroATX. This came with an 80mm in the front, which I replaced with a random used 120mm fan. While the Newegg listing boasts "Build an office PC within the compact and sturdy steel mini tower computer case. Enjoy lasting performance, a spacious interior and versatility for all your current hardware and future upgrades." I think what they meant to say is... why is there still a 90s-style 80mm fan cutout above the CPU cooler area on the side panel and why is there still an optical drive bay? Anyway, since I had it just sitting here, although it cost $30 originally, we'll say this one was free.
CPU Cooler: China RGB CPU Cooler. This is by far the "best" part. Advertised as having "superb cooling performance: Aluminum Fin permutations and combinations of science, with enhanced air duct system, cooling performance is more superior" this cooler also has "Quiet design: the outer and inner quiet move to achieve the perfect combination of performance and silent." Sadly it didn't include thermal paste, so I used a dab of Noctua NT-H1. Price: $14.
OS: Windows 10 Pro x64. Didn't bother with activation, the not activated message in the bottom right isn't a deal breaker. Price: Free.
So, in total, this PC cost $134. Given I could probably sell it for at least that much, I have no complaints yet.
The Build
Overall, assembly was easy, with no fitment issues. In fact, reflowing the GPU took longer than the entire rest of the build process. As you can see by the photos at the bottom of this post, I took cable management very seriously... not.
The CPU cooler came with no instructions, but it was easy enough to figure out. It's not particularly secure but given that it weighs about the same as a pill bottle I'm not concerned about it falling off. The RGB LEDs are a joke, since the included fan is 3-pin only (a PWM fan would have cost too much, duh) and so unless you're running it at full blast/12V only a few of the LEDs come on somewhat dim and flickery. This bothered me so I put a different random non-RGB 92mm fan on there. Temps maxed out at 57C after several hours of Folding@Home, so, hey, it works.
I wasted a lot of time troubleshooting the video card before simply attempting to reflow it and getting it working. The latest drivers off the nVidia website listed for the card refused to install, however Windows Update came through and installed some drivers from 2015. Good enough!
Testing, Benchmarks and Gaming, Part 1/2
Unigine Valley: at 1280x720 with quality: low and all other settings at default, we benchmarked at a respectable 89.8FPS average with a benchmark score of 3759 points.
FurMark: Technically 0FPS since the 300W PSU nopes out on us and reboots almost instantly. I guess I'll swap in a larger PSU and continue testing. To be continued...
Attached Files
Comment